At a press conference in Taipei, Taiwan today, AMD publicly demonstrated the world’s first Microsoft DirectX 11 graphics processor. The series of demonstrations shed new light on the significantly improved computing experience set to debut at the end of 2009. The fusion of AMD’s new ground-breaking graphics processors with the forthcoming DirectX 11 programming interface is set to forever change both applications and PC gaming for the better. To illustrate, AMD showed numerous examples of faster application performance and new game features using the world’s first true DirectX 11 graphics processor.

Get ready for a revolution: Games and other applications are about to get a lot better as a result of AMD’s new graphics hardware and DirectX 11. DirectX 11 features such as tessellation will bring consumers higher quality, superior performing games making use of 6th generation AMD technology. Another DirectX 11 feature, the compute shader, will enable AMD’s DirectX 11 graphics cards to help make Windows 7 run faster in a wide number of applications and in a manner that’s completely transparent to users, for example, in seamlessly accelerating the conversion of video for playback on portable media players through a drag-and-drop interface.

DirectX 11 done right on AMD: The development of DirectX 11 has been broadly influenced by AMD graphics technology. Each new version of DirectX builds on the versions that came before it, and many of the capabilities of DirectX 11 were pioneered on AMD GPUs, including DirectX 10.1, tessellation, compute shaders, Fetch4, custom filter anti-aliasing and high-definition ambient occlusion shading.

Bringing consumers DirectX 11 sooner: The preview of the world’s first DirectX 11 graphics processor at Computex 2009 validates AMD’s commitment to delivering leading technologies to market before anyone else, and to continuing to foster innovation in computing.

Fueling developer demand: It’s not just consumers who are excited about the prospects of DirectX 11, game developers are also incredibly enthusiastic about taking advantage of new DirectX 11 hardware to bring even better games to market, in large part due to AMD’s readiness to meet their DirectX 11 needs. Many developers have indicated their commitment to building DirectX 11 games initially on AMD’s DirectX 11 hardware, delivering superior performance and compatibility.

“AMD has a long track record of delivering pioneering features that have gone on to become mainstays in the DirectX experience, and we’re doing it again with two mature, AMD-developed technologies in DirectX 11 – tessellation and the compute shader – both of which enable a better DirectX 11 experience for consumers,” said Rick Bergman, Senior Vice President, AMD Products Group. “Today, we’re previewing AMD’s DirectX 11 graphics processor to build enthusiasm for this key technology so developers will have games available at launch and shortly thereafter. With the benefits it delivers to gaming, applications and Windows 7, developers are lining up to get their hands on our hardware, and we’re confident that consumers will too.”Source: AMD

from what i've pieced together, anyone with DX9 hardware or above can run a DX11 title - unsupported features are just disabled (and will therefore hurt graphics, or performance)

So if you use a DX10 video card, you get DX10 level graphics and performance. If you're an ATI user, you get DX10.1 and get the far better antialiasing. If you're a DX11 user... well, you get the whole thing.

I just hope DX11 hype is justified once the protocol becomes available, anyone here remember those shots MS released from Flight Simulator X comparing the DX9 version to the DX10 version? Well, I'm still waiting for DX10 to deliver the kind of graphical prowess that was hyped over two years ago....

I know from reading previews that DX11 is supposed to be everything DX10 never was, but after the massive dissapointment DX10 turned out to be, I just hope actual DX11 games live up to the hype; heck I know for sure PC gaming is ripe for a revolution that will finally help it show its supreme power over its console cousins (and to console gamers, it's not that I have anything against consoles, I own a PS3 and Xbox 360 too and enjoy playing games on both :p)

Also, in recent news, game developers are telling us how easy it is to make a DX10 title fully DX11 compatible, just by changing a few lines of engine code. Some really big titles out there supposedly took about 4 hours to be ported to DX11.

That's the problem though... porting. I don't like porting... for example, in theory DX10 should perform better than DX9, given the same machine and game. However, it doesn't... because it's being ported from DX9 to DX10. If there was an all DX10 game, we wouldn't need SLI or Crossfire to run maxed out at acceptable frames. A single GTX260 would do it well over plenty of justice.

DX11 will be better and more easier for programmers and developers something better than anything before just like the same jokes when DX10 announced ...... cause until now there are few games that truly make use and build on DX10 only I'm not saying that DX11 is not good but you know developers are lazy .... the same scenario with DX10.......

by: OnBoardFirst DX11 cards will run first DX11 games like poo anyways, so there's no hurry. But DX11 hardware might be really fast in DX10, like DX10 hardware was really fast in DX9, so it might be good.